This inventiion relates to sun-glare actuation systems and more particularly to a system including sun direction detectors and an electrically operable sun visor system for use on motor vehicles such as buses, trucks, and automobiles.
Heretofore, electrically operable visor systems have been suggested for use on automobiles to automatically extend a stationary, but extendible, sun visor, depending upon signals from light detectors that are located in alignment with the vehicle driver's eyes. In effect, the light detectors intercept the same ray of sunlight that strikes the driver's eyes and generates a signal to a motor that extends the stationary visor to block the sun ray from both the detector and the driver's eyes. Such system are null type feedback systems inasmuch as the sun visor is extended until a signal is no longer produced by the sun light detector and require that the sun light detector be aligned with the driver's eyes. This often and often interferes with the driver's view of the road ahead. Hence, some of the limitations of such electrically operable visor systems are that the detector blocks the driver's view and unless the sun is from a direction subtended by the stationary position of the sun visor from the driver's eyes, the visor does not block the sun from his eyes.
Other sun visor apparatus that has been proposed provides a track for a laterally moveable sun visor along the top of the windshield so that the driver can move the visor manually along the track to a desirable lateral position and then tilt the visor up or down to block the sun. Such a system avoids the limitations of the automatic system described above inasmuch as there is nothing blocking the operator's view and the visor can be moved laterally as necessary to block the sun when the sun is to the left or right of the driver and not just straight ahead. However, such manually operated visors requires the driver to interrupt driving and move the visor along the lateral track and then tilt it as necessary to block the sun. When driving along a road that turns frequently, the driver must make frequent manual adjustments in the lateral position in the visor and the tilt of the visor to keep the sun from his eyes.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an automatic motor vehicle visor system that avoid some of the limitations of the prior visor systems.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a visor system that automatically positions the visor to the appropriate lateral position depending on the relative azimuth direction of the sun and automatically extends the visor depending upon the relative elevation direction of the sun, even while those relative directions of the sun to the vehicle change.
It is a further object to provide such an automatic visor system that automatically blocks the sun even while the relative azimuth direction of the sun to the eyes of the driver of the vehicle changes.
It is another object to provide an automatic motor vehicle sun blocking system including a sun blocker that can be automatically positioned at a number of different lateral positions across the motor vehicle windshield, depending upon the direction of the sun relative to the driver's eyes.
It is another object to provide such an automatic sun blocking system further including means for automatically extending the sun blocker downward as necessary to block the sun at different elevation angles.
Other features and objects and advantages of the present invention will be apparent from the description herein of embodiments of the invention taken in conjunction with the drawings.